CONSERVATISM FROM A FEMININE POINT OF VIEW

Tag Archives: Yemen

The following is a brief article about President Trump’s Refugee Executive order, illustrating points that the reader should be able to use when having a conversation with if liberal, if it comes to that.

According to National Review, the order does the following:

Temporarily halts refugee admissions for 120 days to improve the vetting process.

Caps refugee admissions at 50,000 per year.

The order imposes a temporary 90-day ban on people entering the U.S. from Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen. These are countries either torn apart by jihadist violence or under the control of hostile, jihadist governments.

The ban is in place while the Department of Homeland Security determines the information needed from any country to adjudicate any visa, admission, or other benefit under the INA in order to determine that the individual seeking the benefit is who the individual claims to be and is not a security or public safety threat.

Included in the ban is an important exception that Secretaries of State and Homeland Security may, on a case-by-case basis, and when in the national interest, issue visas or other immigration benefits to nationals of countries for which visas and benefits are otherwise blocked. Hopefully this would allow interpreters and other proven allies to enter the U.S. during the 90-day period.

The president’s order also puts an indefinite hold on admission of Syrian refugees to the U.S. until such time as it is determined that sufficient changes have been made to the USRAP to ensure that admission of Syrian refugees is consistent with the national interest. This is largely a return to the order the Obama administration had in place from 2011 to 2014, virtually slamming the door on Syrian refugee admissions.

President Trump also issued a directive to “prioritize refugee claims made by individuals on the basis of religious-based persecution, provided that the religion of the individual is a minority religion in the individual’s country of nationality.”

The second aspect pertains to a 90-day pause on visas for seven countries outlined as “nations of concern” by prior law and Obama’s DHS policy.

Against the reality of President Trump simply following an almost identical refugee pause process as did Barack Obama in 2011, the media are twisting in the wind trying to make Trump into the evil persona they believe he is while maintaining that former President Obama is a saint. Obama put a six month ban on Iraqi refugees in 2011 and the media was silent, while Trump puts a 120-day suspension on Syrian refugees in 2017 and the media explodes. Furthermore, Obama selects seven countries for enhanced visa security policy and the media is silent while President Trump uses the same Obama DHS policy and the same seven countries for a 90-day visa suspension and the media explodes.

According to the New York Times, a growing group of Republican lawmakers criticized the president’s refugee policy. On Sunday, January 29, certain Republicans said the process, while initiated with the right intention, had been too hastily enacted, and warned that it could backfire against U.S. interests. Senators John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, led the criticism, saying in a statement that the president’s order was not properly vetted and that it could be seen as the United States turning its back on Muslims who had risked their lives to serve as interpreters for the country’s military and diplomats.

McCain said the plan was carried out without proper consultation of United States allies and that it mistakenly lumped together the country’s adversaries such as Iran, with allies like Iraq. Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said that while he supported stronger screening, the order had been poorly implanted, especially for green card holders.

Democrats didn’t waste any time in displaying their dislike of the refugee executive order by showing up in airports across the country. Obviously, these protestors didn’t bother to study the aspects of the order, having only a desire to protest the new president and inconvenience as many travelers as possible. Had there not been protests by Trump haters, carrying on their vows resist anything this president accomplishes, would those who needed to be detained for additional questions been able to get through the process with additional expedience?

One also has to wonder, in the zeal of Chucky Schumer and the Senate Democrats to delay the confirmation of many of the president’s appointees, some items that may have slipped through the cracks in the refugee executive order and other orders could have been prevented.

By now we’ve heard a plethora of summaries and opinions about Monday’s State of the Union address by the current President of the United States. And here’s another one. While most of the following may be a re-hash of what you’ve already heard, I do have a few insights that are my own, or either I haven’t heard anyone else say these things.

As normal for any Democrat administration, increasing entitlements and government hand-outs is always proposed, with a tax increase for the rich in order to pay for these new “freebies.” New entitlements proposed in the speech include the following:

• First two years of community college tuition for free if the student meets certain requirements.
• A $3,000 child care tax credit.
• Seven days of sick leave for all American workers.

While these proposals may sound good, bottom line, they are simply mechanisms by which to grow the government and increase the number of people feeding at the government trough. While I’m certainly a believer in safety nets, we just can’t keep giving stuff away. Somebody’s got to pay for it and that somebody is always “the rich.” Your typical liberal will always say, go after the wealthy, they can afford it. And the wealthy can, but can the middle class afford it? It’s ultimately going to be the middle class that gets hurt. When Mr. Rich Man or Ms. Rich Woman finds themselves having to pay more in taxes, that money is going to the government rather than into the private sector, particularly to small businesses. We’d be much better off with that money going into the private sector, growing the economy. When the private sector prospers, more money generally goes to the government, thereby increasing revenue. This is one of those issues that takes two brain cells to understand and liberals either don’t understand it or don’t want to understand it. I could discuss each of the three bulleted points in depth, but that will be left for another blog post.

The current president also touted the U.S. economy, indicating that its growing and creating jobs at the fastest rate since 1999. Yes, there is some optimism out there due to falling gas prices. More Americans have a little extra money in their pockets. However, when you dig deeper, you find a very sluggish economy. In 2009, there were 33 million people on food stamps, now; 46.5 million people are receiving food stamps. The number of people on some sort of government welfare program has doubled since the current president has taken office. Yes, the employment rate is down, but that doesn’t account for the millions of people who have dropped out of the work force entirely. Right now, there are approximately 92 million people not working.

Of course, the current president is going to boast about healthcare, stating that there are so many more Americans insured today than there were a year ago. However, insurance premiums have increased for most of us and the healthcare we’re getting is not as good as most of us had. When the extra money in the pockets of the middle class due to falling gas prices disappears due to the increase in health insurance premiums, how optimistic are folks going to be? Also, average income has dropped steadily since 2009.

The economy is still in dire straits and can only improve with a strong private sector, something this president and the liberals are fighting and will continue fighting tooth and nail.

Now for my favorite, falling energy prices. In his speech, the president took credit for falling gas prices. Once again, the falling gas prices are due to increased exploration on state and private lands and a little innovation called hydraulic fracturing or more commonly known as fracking. And you know something; liberals are against fracking and increased oil exploration. They hate it and want to further regulate it. In fact, the current administration is planning on implementing additional regulations for oil exploration on state and federal lands. Now what’s this going to result in? If you said gasoline prices increasing, you’re right. I suspect, though, that these regulations will be timed so that the effects will be felt sometime around the 2016 presidential election. If a Republican wins the Whitehouse, he or she and the rest of the Republicans will be blamed for increases in the price of gas. If a Democrat wins the Whitehouse, it will be business as usual. Democrats don’t care about anything except controlling as many aspects of our lives as possible. They’ll somehow blame everything on the Republicans with the mainstream media getting on board with them. Like I’ve said before, facts don’t matter to Democrats.

With respect to foreign policy, remember Baghdad Bob? He was the Iraqi official that kept telling his people that Iraq was winning the war with the allied forces, including the United States, while we were continually bombing them. He became somewhat of a comical character. While this president was discussing foreign policy in his State of the Union address, I couldn’t help think about Baghdad Bob. The world is a dangerous place. ISIS or ISIL is getting stronger and continues to conquer, torture, and kill anyone they don’t like. In fact, ISIL controls more territory in Syria than it did when U.S. airstrikes began six months ago. The threat that there will be another attack on U.S. soil is increasing every day. Four months ago, this president announced that the Arab country of Yemen was stable and served as a model for Middle Eastern states. However, the day of the State of the Union address, Shiite Houthi rebels overtook the presidential palace in Yemen’s capital city of Sanaa, making what a government minister called, “the completion of a coup,” according to CNN.com.

Of course, we all know that the president did not mention the words, Al Qaeda, in his speech and refuses to use the phrase, “Islamic Terrorism.” The primary responsibility of the President of the United States is to keep this country and its people safe from our enemies around the globe. But this president doesn’t seem engaged at all in foreign policy. When the Paris terrorist attacks took place, this president was off touting his great economic policies and didn’t see the need to attend the “we stand with the French” rally that was attended by numerous heads of state from all over the planet, including our allies. Again, this president is not engaged in foreign policy and seems to dismiss the fact that the world is a dangerous place due to the aggressiveness of Islamic terrorism.

And if the above weren’t enough, the current administration is talking with Iran about Iran’s nuclear program in spite of a number of high level democrats who are against negotiations with Iran. Congressional leaders in both chambers are considering a proposal to increase sanctions while international negotiators try to reach an agreement. The president has indicated that he will veto any bill that comes to his desk to increase sanctions on Iran because he feels that such sanctions, which would go into effect June 30, if agreements are not reached, would derail any talks about Iran’s nuclear capabilities.

The most ridiculous statement made by the current president in the State of the Union is that climate change is the biggest threat to our future. I almost choked on that one. The president went on to state that records show 2014 was the warmest year on record. Fourteen of the fifteen warmest years on record have fallen during the first fifteen years of this century. According to James Delingpole, author of The Little Green Book of Eco-Facism, if you were to take the year 1850 as a starting point, we have experienced about 0.8 degrees Celsius of “global warming.” But if you used a 1,000 year time scale, you’d find that the world’s temperatures had been gently cooling since their high point in the Medieval Warming Period. So, Mr. Delingpole opines that global warming may be happening or it may not be happening. Either way, it doesn’t matter because nothing that climate has been doing in our lifetime is in any way more dramatic than anything it has been doing in the last 10,000 or so years. This says to me that climate change is not really significant and certainly not caused by industrial nations such as the United States.

While I could certainly write a lot more, I’m not because this post may be a little too long to keep your attention. It would be my hope that the above is one of the better analyses of the 2015 State of the Union address, one that you can refer to for reference.